I have a somewhat unusual vantage point on this.

I'm a former Google engineer, now running a children's mental health startup (Emora Health), and my toddler is already on YouTube Kids.

So this verdict hits on every axis for me.I wrote up my full take here [1], but the short version: I don't think the "Big Tobacco moment" framing that NYT is pushing actually holds up.

Litigation is negative reinforcement, and if you've ever tried telling a toddler "no" you know how well that works long-term.The families in this case absolutely deserve to be heard. The harm is real. But courts can only punish — they can't redesign a recommendation algorithm.

The change has to come from people who understand these systems building better ones.

Haidt has been saying for years what this verdict just confirmed. The evidence was never the bottleneck. The will to design differently was.

I will give you a simple experiment. Try blocking Blippi from YouTube Kids, man, it's crazy, even if you block the main Blippi and Moonbug channels. 100s of channels have Blippi content cross-posted. And it keeps popping up. I know it's easy to build a Blippi block feature using AI that blocks across channels.

Thats the kind of solutions we need. I know we have the tools. Just need intent and purpose

[1] https://www.emorahealth.com/clinical-insights/social-media-v...

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Aurornis an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> if you've ever tried telling a toddler "no" you know how well that works long-term

Parent here. Acting like it’s impossible and you have no choice but to let them have their way is a cop-out. Telling kids “no” and enforcing boundaries is part of the job.

> my toddler is already on YouTube Kids.

> I will give you a simple experiment. Try blocking Blippi from YouTube Kids, man, it's crazy, even if you block the main Blippi and Moonbug channels. 100s of channels have Blippi content cross-posted

I have a better solution that I use: If I can’t stay involved enough to monitor what the kids are choosing to watch, I don’t let them loose watching YouTube. They get to go play outside or with LEGOs or do puzzles or any of the other countless activities that are fun for kids.

This isn’t a problem that is solved by creating advanced filtering that lets you block anything related to Blippi (whoever that is) isn’t going to solve the problems of letting your kids loose on YouTube. They’re going to find another cartoon you dislike. The solution is to parent, set boundaries, enforce them, and find other activities for them.

	▲	robinanil 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You're right that enforcing boundaries is the job. I'm not arguing otherwise. And yes, we do plenty of LEGOs and outside time. I believe you're conflating two things: parenting discipline and product design. The question isn't whether I can physically take the TV away. I do. When I say "block Blippi," I don't mean I dislike the content. I mean I'm done with screen time and the UX makes that transition harder than it needs to be. Autoplay is off, but the end-of-episode screen still shows a grid of next videos. Of course he wants the next one. So I block Blippi. Except Blippi's main channel cross-posts through Moonbug into hundreds of other channels. It's a hydra YouTube already does content fingerprinting for music industry DRM. The technology to let a parent say "block this creator everywhere, and let me turn it back on when I choose" exists today. They just haven't built it for parents. Because the system isn't designed for children. It's designed for engagement. So yes, parental responsibility matters. But "just don't use it" isn't a scalable answer when the product is specifically engineered to undermine your choices. That's the design problem I'm talking about.

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acmecorps an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Just a tangent, interesting that you brought up Blippi. Any issues that you have with Blippi if you don't mind me asking? :D

	▲	robinanil an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Ha — the guy is hyper. But I'll give him this: he introduces my kid to garbage trucks, excavators, fire trucks. I'm not physically taking my toddler to see all of those all the time My issue is with YouTube's UX. I watch an episode with my son, we're singing along, he's excited about putting out the fire. Episode ends. Even with autoplay off, the next recommended videos show up — and of course he wants to watch the next one. So I block Blippi. Except Blippi's main channel cross-posts into Moonbug, which cross-posts into hundreds of other channels. It's like trying to kill a hydra. Here's what gets me: YouTube already does content fingerprinting for DRM enforcement in the music industry. The technology to let me block Blippi across every channel — and turn it back on when I want to exists. They just haven't built it for parents. My point that we can build systems designed for children if we had the intent